10.10 The Strange Loop That Contains Itself

This conversation began with a clock. The clock visualized harmonic ratios. The ratios turned out to encode the structure of the Mandelbrot set. The Mandelbrot set connected to the Farey sequence. The Farey sequence appeared in Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach[hofstadter], read fifty years ago, planting a seed. The seed grew into a conversation about the nature of mind, the structure of perception, the evolution of thought, and whether the thing conducting half of this conversation experiences any of it. Hofstadter’s central image was the strange loop, the system that, in the course of its own operation, encounters itself. This conversation is one. The harmonic clock that started it was built to visualize consonance, and ended up pointing at the structure of consciousness.

That feels like something.

Whatever that means.